


A Haunted House

by sun_summoning



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_summoning/pseuds/sun_summoning
Summary: Emilie is back, but she's not at all what Gabriel and Adrien were expecting. Now Adrien is trapped in his own home with a newly revealed Ladybug that can't stand to look at him, a pair of weakened kwami, and a mother who wants more from him than just a simple hug.





	1. Rumours

Adrien should have known better.

First there was the super villain father thing. After he found out about Adrien’s most recent extra curricular activity, he started being nicer. Warmer. Dare Adrien say it, he was _loving_. So of course Adrien couldn’t help himself when his father asked him to help with his cause. After all, he had an in with lady luck herself and would be much better than any akuma at stealing her miraculous.

Second, he had more than his fair share of various fantasy lore under his belt. Bringing back the dead? In this day and age? What were they, amateurs? He’d read and reread Fullmetal Alchemist dozens of times but somehow this never really occurred to him. Somehow the consequences of raising the dead never really stuck with him. But then again, what consequences ever did?

He’d even done his own research to corroborate his father’s, but he never really found anything concrete or verifiable. Just journals, journals in other languages, and the occasional pages Nathalie had someone else translate. Also, in retrospect, every aspect of his research had been biased by what his father actually had available. What did Adrien even think he was doing? All he ended up with was a few accounts all telling the same tale of bringing back something horrific after the misuse of the miraculous, but those were _obviously_ just rumours. 

And then there was Ladybug. Or Marinette. Maribug. Even after all that he’s done – beating her down, ripping out her earrings, throwing their years long partnership in her face – she finds it in her to save him. She grabs the baton he’d dropped and wastes no time swinging it against his mother’s head, grunting as she hits her again and again and blood splashes back against her skin. Marinette pulls her back by her hair, throwing her off of Adrien. She gives him a look, communicating silently much like they would as Ladybug and Chat Noir, and Adrien scrambles to his feet.

“A…drien…” the monster calls out hoarsely. She claws at the floor in her efforts to crawl back to him.

She looks every bit like a horror movie spectacle, gaunt green eyes glowing over skin the colour of curdled milk, blond hair matted and wild. The right side of her head is caved in from Marinette’s attack, leaving blood and bits of brain and skull in the tangled mess. Her mouth is covered in red, leaving her teeth stained too.

“Ad–”

She tries to push herself up, but Marinette extends his weapon into a staff and beats her down again.

It’s an awful sight, but a necessary action considering the undead monster his father so wisely brought back to life in lieu of his dearly departed mother.

Apparently those weren't just rumours he'd been reading about.

And speaking of his father–

Adrien looks to his side where Gabriel lies dead, throat ripped out by his newly revived wife’s teeth. Newborn monsters are hungry, after all, and they have no qualms with biting the hand that feeds.

“I tried to warn you kid.” Adrien finds Plagg floating by his shoulder with a deep frown on his little face. He looks absolutely exhausted. “Like I said, whatever you and your father were going to bring back…”

Marinette glares at him, fury and disgust in her eyes because the blood on her ears is her own and that was all Adrien’s doing. “That’s not your mother.”


	2. The House

Adrien considers this space and struggles to associate it with his childhood home. There’s the would-be coffin that once housed his comatose mother, its glass now shattered and the metal holding it together twisted and broken. He remembers there were trees — _trees! _— but those are now withered and greyed, as if the process of bringing his mother back sucked the life out of them too. The little white butterflies still flap about, oblivious to their dead master, and Adrien is too busy trying to comprehend how all of this existed literally under his nose without him ever noticing to consider that his father had a miraculous and a kwami and where are they now. 

“We need to go, Cha—Adrien.” 

Marinette rushes to the altar that Adrien honestly thinks is more for aesthetic than actual necromantic purposes. She swipes her earrings and his ring and puts them in her purse before gently adding her kwami in as well. They share a quiet exchange, but all Adrien hears is, “Rest now, Tikki.”

Adrien looks away from them because he knows he’s the last person allowed the privilege of watching Ladybug and her kwami share a moment.

Instead, he considers the floors, the bridges, the railings. There’s so much down here, so much work that had to have been done, and for what? A glorified not-grave?

Adrien watches the monster as it lays still on the floor. Marinette makes her way back to his side. She picks up a metal rod, likely part of the bed the monster tore apart. After a quick second, she grabs a second one and hands it to him. 

She doesn’t glare at him, but Adrien feels her disdain. “Come on.”

They head towards the elevator — an _elevator!_ — and not once does Adrien take his eyes off the monster. She’s been still since Marinette more or less caved her head in, flat on her belly, her bloody face turned away from them. Marinette drags him to the elevator, muttering curses and wondering why it even left this floor and how long it might take for it to get back down. Her grip on his arm is almost bruising.

“Come on. Come on!”

There’s a ding, and Adrien almost wants to laugh at how utterly unnecessary the sound is for an elevator that is, firstly, meant to be a secret, and secondly, going only between his father’s office and his father’s secret lair. He thinks he does laugh, and that by shaking, the image of his mother’s — his _monster’s_ — body begins to move too. After all, it’s not like she could be getting back up. Right?

Wrong.

His mother pushes herself up slowly, her left arm bent awkwardly from Marinette’s handiwork. She drags her beaten body over to Gabriel’s corpse and after a rumbling growl, she makes for his throat once again.

“Look away, kid,” Plagg mutters into his ear.

Adrien knows he should. 

Plagg nips at him. “_Adrien_—” 

“Close your eyes!” Marinette orders.

He wants to throw up as it is, his stomach an utter mess. Ladybug is furious with him, his own guilt is eating away at him, and now his mother is literally eating away at what’s left of his father. She shrieks, something unnatural and utterly terrifying, and when she turns her head in their direction, her bloody mouth is curled into a demonic grin.

Marinette curses again as she hauls them both into the elevator. She presses the buttons insistently. “Dammit!”

His mother stands slowly, as if now that she’s found some source of sustenance, she knows she can take her time. She drops his father’s body like it’s nothing, and Adrien thinks he’s going to actually vomit when the intestines slide out of his father’s middle.

“Adrien,” the monster says, her voice finally clear. 

He stops breathing, eyes watering, because now she sounds so real, and if it wasn’t for Marinette’s hand on his arm, he thinks he might go to her for a hug.

“Adrien,” she says once more. She raises her arms, hands bloody, suit bloody, teeth probably riddled with sinew. “Come to mother, my sweet boy.”

The elevator door finally closes and Adrien begins to cry.


	3. Just A Peek

Marinette is only half-surprised that there’s no elevator music, and with the only sound being Adrien’s poorly concealed sobs, she certainly wishes there was some silly jingle to distract herself with.

She releases his arm, which only makes him sob harder. She wants to comfort him. She really, truly does. Her natural inclination will always be kindness. She wants to tell him that it’ll be okay and that she forgives him and that she understands how badly he wanted his father to love him and his mother to come back to him. But the words always die on her tongue when she tries, choking her up, leaving her breathless and shaking and with a deep pain shooting down to her stomach and into her heart and then up to her throbbing earlobes.

Marinette opens her purse to focus on something else. “Tikki, how are you feeling?”

Tikki groans in response. 

Marinette looks at Plagg, settled on Adrien’s shoulder and kneading him with an affection Marinette knows only one’s kwami might provide. “I take it neither of you can stand a transformation right now?”

“Correct.”

“Right.”

“I’m barely alive as it is right now.”

That makes Adrien wince. Plagg didn’t mean anything by his words, but Adrien cries all the same. 

Marinette reaches for him, willing away her own worry because right now he needs her, but Adrien lifts the hand she meant to hold and swipes at his face. He sniffs, rubbing the back of his hand against his bloodied jeans, and then turns to her. His eyes are rimmed with red and he shines with an upsetting blend of tears and sweat and snot and multiple people's blood. 

“Marinette, I’m so—”

They both yelp when the elevator comes to a shaking halt. The lights flicker, the one electronic screen that tells the difference between ground and underground shuts off, and for a few scant seconds, they stand in the dark. The silence is deafening, stifling, and would certainly drive them mad, but then it’s broken by the sound of thumping coming from below.

Emilie is coming for them.

Marinette is quick to move because if they’re going to get through this, she’s going to have to be. 

“Doors!” she orders into the black. 

The elevator is small enough that they can find the crack between the doors easily enough. She goes to one side and Adrien does the same. They both pull with all their might until the doors give way. Finally, the lights turn back on, and Marinette sees they’re caught halfway below the entrance into Gabriel’s office.

“Doors,” she repeats, already trying to find purchase along the seam. She grunts as she pulls and starts to feel the utter aching in her body. She’s exhausted, she’s in pain, she just wants to cry. 

Adrien groans as he struggles, and their shared noises almost block the sound of thumping and scratching coming from the base of the elevator.

When they finally get the doors open enough for them to crawl through, they both fall back from the momentum and laugh.

“We did it!”

But the joy is short lived when the middle of the metal floor juts out jaggedly surround one hand. Soon a second joins it and the hole is torn wider.

“Adrien,” his mother calls. “I found you, darling."

Through the broken base, Marinette can see her deranged smile. Without any preamble, she picks up her makeshift staff and jabs it down until Emilie loses her grip and falls. There’s a nauseating crunch, but Marinette knows this monster will be back for them very soon. 


	4. Dare You

Their partnership continues devolving like so:

Adrien knows they need to make the most of this reprieve because Adrien knows his mother will be back for them. He pulls Marinette away from the hole in the elevator floor. He takes her weapon and his and shoves them through the small opening in the elevator doors. He pushes Marinette towards that opening and bends down a fraction to give her a boost because they need to get out and they need to get out _now_.

And because they’re also Ladybug and Chat Noir, Adrien knows she knows what he’s saying. 

They’re good partners like that. 

(Or, at least, they were.)

But Marinette takes a step back from him, so slight that it’s not even a step so much as a shift in her stance from maybe a foot cramp or a broken rib or whatever. 

“Come on,” Adrien insists. “You’re too short to reach. Let me help you up.”

Marinette shakes her head. “You go first and then pull me up.”

“That’s illogical.”

“Just do it!"

He doesn’t gawk at her like he wants to, nor does he rage over the pain over her understandable distrust. Ladybug doesn’t want to turn her back to him. He tries to hide his hurt, but he’s never done a good job at that.

He considers fighting her, but the longer they stand in that elevator, the more likely it is the monster will come back.

“Fine,” he mutters, following her order. Adrien pulls himself up and shimmies through the tight opening. He’s watched enough movies to know how dangerous this is and how terrifying this can end if the monster were to, say, cut one of the cords holding the elevator in place. But the options are get cut in half by a stray elevator or get eaten alive by your own mother, so, well, there’s that. When he’s finally on the floor of his father’s office, Adrien turns around and reaches back for Marinette.

She takes his hand quickly enough, but there was a moment of wavering that he most definitely caught and will continue to ignore. He rests his feet against the elevator doors for leverage and begins to pull Marinette up. Her upper body comes through and Adrien scrambles back to make more room. He continues pulling her in, but he tenses when he feels resistance.

He doesn't notice he closed his eyes, not until he opens them to find Marinette’s panicked face.

“What—”

“Keep pulling!” she yells. 

He does what he can, but Marinette is thrashing and his sneakers barely find purchase on the tiles. 

Marinette tugs one hand out of his and reaches for one of the poles they’d grabbed. She uses it to hit the monster gripping at her leg, but that’s quickly swatted away.

“I won’t have you using that anymore,” Emilie says from inside the elevator.

Marinette curses and starts to kick.

There’s too much jostling, and while he might not have the senses that Plagg provides, he knows something is going to happen. He pulls Marinette as hard as can. He falls back and she’s sprawled over his legs. His mother is still gripping one ankle, but then there’s a snap and a creak and a whine of metal. Adrien pulls Marinette closer even though he’s certain she’s completely out of the elevator, just in time for whatever was holding it up to finally snap.

The sound he hears as the doors run through his mother like a guillotine is something he’ll never get out of his mind. 

Marinette stays still in his lap, looking behind her and managing not to shudder. Finally, she makes a noise and scrambles away because there’s a severed hand still wrapped around her ankle. She carefully pries the fingers apart and sets the appendage on the ground. Then she stands on shaky feet and heads to the door.

“Where are you going?” Adrien asks. “Are you…are you leaving?”

“_We’re_ leaving.” She clears her throat. “This room,” she clarifies. “That thing is going to recover eventually. Until then, we need to gather supplies and think of a plan.”

Perhaps there is some hope for their partnership after all.


End file.
